Warning for gay men and MSM

February 18, 2005

Risky Sex Is Back Author: Editorial

Publication: The New York Times

Date: February 18, 2005

Gay Americans who watched their friends and neighbors die in large

numbers in the AIDS epidemic of the 1980's learned a tragic lesson about

disease transmission and the dangers of unprotected sex. But the lesson

seems not to have endured: young people are returning to dangerous

sexual behavior.

Public health officials in New York recently encountered a gay man

infected with a strain of H.I.V. that is resistant to virtually all of

the standard drugs and that appears to lead to a rapid onset of

full-blown AIDS. No one yet knows whether the case represents a new

phase in the epidemic or a problem confined to a single individual in

New York and possibly another in San Diego. But public health workers

are justifiably alarmed by the apparently widespread risky behavior this

case has brought to light.

The patient is believed to have had unprotected sex with hundreds of

people in recent months, sometimes at parties stoked by methamphetamine,

a drug that lowers sexual inhibitions. Open sex parties were common 30

years ago, but were all but stamped out in the 90's thanks to gay

anti-AIDS campaigners and public health officials.

Health workers and community volunteers have a lot of work to do to turn

this trend around. The medical community should make the new rapid AIDS

tests more widely available so people can learn right away whether they

are infected. It should also be routine to test newly identified AIDS

patients for drug resistance, as is now common for tuberculosis. Such

data could serve as an early warning system for changes in the AIDS

virus.

The first step, however, should be to teach another generation to

avoid risky behavior - like the plague.

__________

ASHOK ROW KAVI

E-mail: <arowkavi@...>

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